Did you know that over 70% of marketers plan to increase their content marketing budgets in 2014? (source: Curata)

If “content marketing” is a new concept to you let’s start at the beginning. A basic content marketing definition is the creation and sharing of media by publishing content. There are several content marketing goals, including:

Driving sales and/or leads

Engaging customers, buyers and influencers

Boosting brand awareness

Establishing or sustaining thought leadership

Increasing SEO and web traffic

Decreasing the cost of acquisition for new customers

Over two-thirds of marketers report increases in lead quantity and quality thanks to content marketing!

If it’s time you get serious about creating a winning content marketing plan we’ve gathered nine awesome content marketing blog articles to help you out.

Let’s start off by debunking a few content marketing ideas or misconceptions with the help of Nicole Beckett from Business 2 Community. We should keep these content marketing best practices in mind while reading through the rest of today’s articles.

More is NOT better. Beckett says, “You have to publish a steady stream of high-quality content.” One well thought out piece of content can be infinitely more valuable than ten articles with boring information that could be found on any number of different websites. What makes your content unique and engaging?

Starting a blog is NOT good enough. A blog is just one step in your content marketing plan. Beckett shares that a “blog can be a powerful part of your content marketing strategy but your efforts can’t stop there.”

This article posted over on the YouMoz Blog goes a level deeper and creates the perfect roadmap for conquering some big content creation goals.

It first outlines a basic content marketing guide which includes establishing the direction for big content to create in a year, researching if there is other content like yours on the market and then deciding the audience the content will be written for. Finally understanding the purpose of why you are writing is important in the early stages.

The next stage to creating big content is the process of actually writing the content. Steven Macdonald suggests doing things like starting small, breaking up the content into smaller more manageable chunks and getting feedback along the way.

Finally, decide when it’s time to launch and then market the content like crazy. Promote it on your website, through social media, with email marketing and then remarketing the content as you need.

If you are a more visual person or need some visual graphics to show your boss how your content marketing idea will play out, head over to this Search Engine Watch article by Dan Cristo. His 5 steps include:

Now that we are almost through here are some final tips for content marketing that have gone unmentioned up until now, thanks to Forbes and Drew Hendricks:

Use a content marketing calendar tool.

Use a collaboration content marketing tool between your team to stay organized.

Be unique.

At 1st on the List we help clients with all levels of content marketing strategies. Want to know about the link between content marketing and SEO? Call us toll free at 1-888-262-6687 today or email our experts at contact@1stonthelist.ca.